Thursday, September 25, 2014

Yet another immoral war in the Middle East

President
Obama, in a speech to the nation on the eve of the thirteenth anniversary of
9/11, declared that the United States is engaged in a war to degrade and then
to destroy ISIL – the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. As an American
Christian committed to working for peace, I objected to Obama's declaration for
two reasons.

First,
Obama wrongly characterized ISIL as a terrorist organization. Thankfully, he
and other administration officials have since altered their language; they now
describe ISIL as an insurgency instead of as a terrorist organization.
Unfortunately, the image of ISIL as a terrorist group persists.

Accurate
terminology is important. Terrorist organizations are non-state actors who
commit violent acts against innocent civilians to advance the group's political
agenda by manipulating a government. Insurgents seek to overthrow the existing
government and to replace it with their own government or state. An insurgency
may begin as a terror group, but, unlike a terror group, an insurgency
establishes a government and controls territory. Accurately defining the
problem is essential because effective counterterrorism requires implementing a
different strategy and tactics than does a counterinsurgency.

ISIL has
committed appalling atrocities on a significant scale. In the West, the highest
profile examples of those atrocities are the beheadings of two American
journalists and a British aid worker. However, those beheadings are only three
of hundreds of beheadings that ISIL personnel have performed in addition to
their other reprehensible actions that include the attempted genocide of a
religious minority (the Yadizis), misogynist policies toward women, etc.

Visceral
revulsion to ISIL's horrendous actions is an insufficient justification for
waging war. Instead, Just War Theory's jus ad bellum framework provides
Christians a paradigm for assessing when war, of which counterinsurgency is one
type, is ethically justifiable. There are six jus ad bellum criteria; a just
war must satisfy all six.

The
first jus ad bellum criterion is that a war must have a just cause. Historically,
just cause connoted a sovereign state defending its territory in response to an
incursion by another state. More recently, many Christian ethicists have
advocated expanding just cause to include defending innocents against an
egregiously abusive state, e.g., in the case of genocide.

ISIL,
unlike the terror organization al Qaeda from which it emerged, claims to have
established a sovereign state (hence the group's name, the Islamic State of
Iraq and the Levant). A caliph, presumably ISIL's leader, will govern the new
state; ISIL sees this caliph as the successor to the Muslim caliphs who ruled
much of the Middle East and North Africa prior to the European colonial era. ISIL
has attempted genocide against people under its rule, establishing prima facie
just cause for other nations to intervene.

The
second jus ad bellum criterion is that those waging a just war should have
right intent, i.e., intend to establish a more just, fuller peace. On this
point, the case for waging war against ISIL is more problematic. President
Obama in his speech to the nation emphasized the need to protect Americans and
American interests in the Middle East. A significant part of the American
presence in the Middle East is because of the oil there.

However,
other reasons for the American presence and interest in the Middle East are
less self-serving. ISIL's agenda includes reestablishing a caliphate and
obeying their interpretation of Sharia (Islamic law) that mandates killing all
Jews and Christians in Muslim lands and killing all apostate Muslims, i.e.,
Shiites and moderate Sunnis. The global community has an ethical and legal
responsibility to protect the innocent.

The
third jus ad bellum criterion is that right authority must declare the war.
Right authority connotes a state's political authority, e.g., in the US, the
Constitution specifies that Congress alone has the authority to declare war.
With the world becoming flat (to use Thomas Friedman's memorable metaphor),
Christian ethicists have begun discussing the merit of redefining right
authority in international terms.

President
Obama claimed that Congressional authorization to hunt down those responsible
for the 9/11 attacks and to prevent future terror attacks gave him authority to
take military action against ISIL. If ISIL is not a terrorist organization,
Obama's reliance on the post-9/11 Congressional action becomes more tenuous.
Alternatively, some Constitutional scholars believe that a President has the
authority and responsibility, without waiting for Congress to declare war, to
defend the nation against possible attack. In either case, Obama requested
Congress to fund, and thereby to endorse, his proposed military actions against
ISIL. The Obama administration is concurrently striving to form a broad
international coalition to participate actively in efforts to destroy ISIL.

The
fourth jus ad bellum criterion is that a just war is proportional, i.e., a just
war should cause less harm than would otherwise occur. Predicting the amount of
harm that military action against ISIL will cause, particularly the harm to
innocents euphemistically known as collateral
damage, is difficult. However, given ISIL's brutal (though short) record
and lengthy list of enemies, battling ISIL would have to result in highly
improbable amounts of collateral damage to become credibly disproportional.

The
fifth jus ad bellum criterion is that a just war is the last resort. ISIL shows
no sign of being open to negotiation. ISIL is committed to the violent
overthrow of Iraq and Syria; ISIL is similarly committed to the full
implementation of its extremist version of Sharia.

Following
its military successes and territorial grabs, ISIL now earns about $11 billion
annually selling oil on the world market. Selling that oil requires the
cooperation of other nations as intermediaries and buyers. One hopes that no
developed nation would buy oil directly from ISIL. Likewise, purchasing arms
with funds generated by oil sales requires third party assistance to first
purchase and then to deliver the arms to ISIL. Stopping ISIL from selling oil
and purchasing arms are two steps, short of waging war, which the US and other
states, working cooperatively, can take toward significantly degrading ISIL's
warfighting capacity and ability to sustain a viable government. These efforts,
even if fully successful, will probably fall short of destroying ISIL.

The
final jus ad bellum criterion is that a just war must have a reasonable chance
of success. Waging war to end horrendous evil in the absence of a reasonable
chance of success simply increases the total amount of harm, death, and
suffering without moving the world closer to peace.

The US
and its coalition partners do not have a reasonable chance of success against
ISIL. This was the second and more basic reason that I objected to Obama's declaring
the US would conduct military operations to degrade and then to destroy ISIL.
The US invasions and extended occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan underscore
the futility of outside forces, even with vast military superiority, attempting
to force regime change on an unwilling people.

Only the
people of Iraq, Syria, and the adjacent Muslim countries can defeat ISIL. These
are the people ISIL threatens most directly and who have the most to lose from
ISIL's continuing military successes.

Contrary
to what media reports infer, ISIL has significant support among Sunnis in Syria
and Iraq, as its military successes demonstrate. ISIL's repeated defeats of
Iraq illustrate why success against ISIL is unlikely. Iraq has a large standing
army and a small air force. The US has spent billions of dollars equipping
Iraq's military and a decade training them. Theoretically, Iraq's military has
strong motives for defeating ISIL at any cost. Iraq's fate as a nation hinges
upon ISIL's defeat. More importantly, a disproportionately large percentage of
Iraqi military personnel are Shiites whom ISIL considers apostate Muslims
deserving of death. Yet ISIL, in spite of fighting without an air force,
without billions of dollars' worth of modern equipment, and without the benefit
of foreign military advisors and training often defeats Iraq in battle. Indeed,
ISIL's forces consist primarily of fighters ISIL recruited locally in Iraq and
Syria. ISIL's few hundred volunteers from Europe and North America are not
decisive for ISIL's military successes. Similarly, ISIL initially scrounged most
of its weapons and munitions locally in Iraq and Syria.

Arab
nations (e.g., Saudi Arabia) agreeing to provide air power in the fight against
ISIL represents a positive development. The US has sold billions of dollars'
worth of warplanes to Saudi Arabia and trained Saudi pilots and maintenance
personnel. If Saudi Arabia is ill prepared to fight ISIL, this exposes the
hypocrisy of US arms sales. If Saudi Arabia is reluctant to play a prominent
role in the fight against ISIL, this bodes ill for the odds of success and
stability in the Middle East. Air power may retard the pace of insurgents'
victory, but air power alone has never defeated any insurgency.

Ending
the evil of ISIL represents an opportunity for Sunnis and Shiites, and Sunni
and Shiite dominated governments, to cooperate in opposing a common threat. Also,
the US should enlist Iran, the world's most populous and powerful Shiite state,
in efforts against ISIL. This might constructively expand US-Iranian
engagement, lead to progress in efforts to limit nuclear proliferation, allow
Iran to exercise positive hegemony among Shiites, and, in time, diminish
Iranian support for Shiite terror groups. Diplomatic overtures along these
lines arguably incarnate what Jesus meant by loving one's enemies.

The sine
qua non for defeating an insurgency is that the governments and peoples the
insurgency threatens must have the will to win. Otherwise, the insurgency
continues to expand, gaining military strength as it gains control of
territory, people, and other resources. Obviously, the will to win has been
lacking in Iraq. Arab nations who succumb to US pressure to join the fight
against ISIL will generally lack the will to win. No war is just unless those
fighting for justice have a reasonable chance of success.

As a
Christian actively working for peace, I find myself repeatedly humbled in the
face of situations, such as the insurgency waged by ISIL in the Middle East,
for which I can see no viable, ethical solution that will speedily end or
prevent great suffering. So, what is a Christian to do?

Third,
oppose government actions that may appear well intentioned and expedient but
are unjust when measured against Christian ethical traditions (both pacifism
and Just War). US Christians can lobby their members of Congress to oppose
waging war against ISIL because the war is unjust. Concurrently, US Christians
can advocate humanitarian aid for refugees fleeing ISIL and policies to
encourage nations directly threatened by ISIL to act to end the insurgency.

Fourth,
trust God. Julian of Norwich usefully reminds us that All shall be well, all manner of things shall be well.